Montreal > all

During the last few days I've been spending a lot of time with a Canadian friend of mine who's now here in Finland. He's from Edmonton and he had this to say:

"Juha, would you please stop going on and on about Montreal already? Please?"

I promptly answered: "No."

I think he hates me now.

Home sweet home

Great. 80-90% of the grass in Joensuu is dead. Yellow and brown and dead. It looks like Pripyat here. Must have been the heat.

Well this sucks, just royally

I feel horrible for saying this but honestly, I don't want to leave.

Taina, mom, dad, sis, bro, friends... move to Montréal? Please? Pretty please? With sugar on top?

If anything, spending two months in Montréal has made me realize how there really just isn't anything happening in Joensuu. Going back there feels like switching back to eating regular oatmeal for breakfast after wolfing down Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs every morning for two months. I sure liked my Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs. Wouldn't mind eating them again in the future.

I will try to make a some sort of recap of things I learned and/or enjoyed in Montréal once I get back to Finland and maybe recover from jetlag a bit.

Again, thank you so much, Chick, Carole, Jon, Mandy, Don, Pat, Lynda, Katrin, Dan, Andrew, Murray, Heather, Bradley, Ralph, Chris, Jen, Emma, Ann(e?), Dennis, Nora, Mel, Rona, The Weird Old Hippie Dude, and all the other colourful characters I met during my adventures and forgot to mention here (sorry!), you made me enjoy my stay here so much more! You rock.

La Ronde

I'm so happy I decided to go to La Ronde after all. Big thanks to Dan for encouraging me to go.

The Goliath is sick. It's sick I tell you. I swear the drops were just straight down vertical.

Fireworks were amazing up close. Couldn't stop laughing at the total overkill of exploding awesomeness.

Also visited Angrignon park and the city library.

Dunno what's gonna happen tomorrow. About two trillion overlapping/conflicting plans. Well two anyway.

Two and a half days left

Quick update.

Wednesday: spent 5h in the Museum of Fine Arts. Miles Davis exhibition rocked. Saw works by Picasso and Cezanne and all those guys. The rest of the day in Old Montreal + Old Port.

Thursday: Went to Oka for some biking (and swimming!) with Don and Pat. Pretty amazing beach they got there, too bad there was very little water. At the 1.6 metre sign I had water to my knees. Later in the evening went to the Morgan Arboretum with Chick. Saw Saturn and its rings through a telescope, spent an hour staring the sky for some Perseids, saw maybe 15 and a fireball too. 200+ people in there, folks cheering and clapping after each shooting star, was nice.

Friday: Spent the day in parks mainly, visited the Biosphere in Jean Drapeau too. Highlight of the day: munching on my grilled cheese sandwich at Orange Julep while Depeche Mode's Enjoy the Silence was playing on the radio. Being right next to the Decarie Expressway, I had to take the title ironically.

Tomorrow: one last park, then maybe an amusement park and fireworks.

Also, picture of the day:



Blurry but awesome.

Oh man, what a day... again

A day full of wonder and blunder.

I woke up at 10 (yeah I know, I know... sue me), did my usual morning routine of reading/replying to (university) email, going through the news followed by some googling. I've learned that google maps is a really neat service. Never had much use for it in Joensuu (:D), but here it's just pure gold. I always check my targets for the day on google maps to help me navigate later on.

Anyhow, done with my preparation I ran to the bus stop, only to realize I had checked the wrong bus schedule and missed my bus by some 5mins or so. First mistake of the day. So I decided to walk back home to wait for the next one there, but on the way back I met Chick talking to his neighbour Dave, who was just about to go take care of some business so he decided to give me a lift to Fairview. Thanks, Dave!

So I eventually I get to Cote-Vertu and go grab a late breakfast or lunch (late brunch I guess!) at the Decarie Hot-dogs (or whatever it was, the sign was almost completely faded). The joint, which both Chick and Jon apparently used to frequent back in the day, was well worth the visit. I ate what must have been the greasiest pile of fries ever. Me and my arteries loved every second of it.

I walk back to Cote-Vertu, take the metro to Bonaventure. I have this silly way of sometimes not getting off at the nearest metro station to where I want to go; I kinda wanna visit as many stations as possible, simply because they're all different and some of them are really nice looking inside with all kinds of colourful artwork and stuff.

It took a bit of wandering around but after a while I found St Patrick's Basilica and hopped right in. From outside the church didn't look like much but inside it was just gorgeous. Beautiful arched ceiling, marble pillars, stained glass windows, you name it they had it. I had spent maybe 15 minutes tops there when a guy walked up to me and whispered 'excuse me, we're kinda closed' so out I go again.

Outside I was met with an old bum, who was adamant on helping me out with whatever it was that I needed help with, which was rather difficult as I didn't really need help with anything. He was very persistent though, kept talking and talking and talking about Montreal and how much he loves the city and all that business, most likely hoping to get a buck or two from me. Probably much to his dissapointment I turned out to be a perpetually broke student with little change to spare, but he didn't let it show. He was a really nice dude, or at least pretended to be one, and if the case really was the latter, he succesfully fooled me.

Anyway, I eventually found myself at Place des Festivals, where I just sat for some 30-45mins watching skaters pull off some crazy tricks and kids play with the streams of water blasting out of the ground, stealthily taking pics every now and then in hopes of not being thought to be a pedophile. It was already past six o'clock when I got another one of my stupidly brilliant ideas - walk up to the lookout on Mont-Royal.

The temperature was only some 25-26 degreees but the humidity was killing me. It was killing me even more when I walked up St Catherine and Peel and finally up the mountain along the stairs. Not something I'd recommend you do in jeans and with a heavyish backpack with you. Well, I did and I was dripping sweat and my jeans were glued to my legs. Luckily at the top there is a chalet with bathrooms and water fountains for drinking etc so I could at least wash the sweat off my face and drink some more water as the bottle I took with me had already vanished ages ago.

It was like 19:30 when I went to the lookout and just sat there taking pics and waiting for the sun to go down in order to witness the gradual transformation of the scene from light to dark with the city slowly lighting up in the background. It took almost 90 minutes but it was totally worth it. Seeing the city down below you all lit up at night - just wow.

My next stop was getting some bagels from St Viateur or Fairmount and on my map I had noted a road on the north side of the mountain heading that way, but as I got there I found out there was no sidewalk. I figured I'd just drive all the drivers nuts if I went there, so I backtracked to the outlook, went for the bad idea number two, and decided to walk down the stairs back to Peel. Now, it must have been the first time I felt a bit nervous here in Montreal and it wasn't because I afraid of some crazed junkie pouncing on me from the bushes but because it was literally pitch-black. You could see a couple of feet in front of you, and even that just barely. Not exactly the ideal situation for climbing down some 500 steps zig-zagging down in a rather steep angle.

It took me longer than I thought so I just thought I'd ditch the bagel trip and walked down Peel to Rene Levesque instead. As some folks know, I just love cities at night and what better place in Montreal to admire the lit up skyscraper awesomeness in downtown than Rene Levesque. So I walked all the way up to Atwater and then down Atwater to Lionel-Groulx. There I quickly visited Tim Hortons for a coffee and some donuts (See, Carole? The reason I don't eat much in the Wasteland is because I keep nourishing myself with the fine, healthy culinary marvels Montreal is famous for). So I grabbed the stuff, went out and "Oh, look! There's the 211, I think I can make it!"

I just made it in but as I was one of the last people to enter the bus, all the seats were taken and I had to stand. The bus set off for the Wasteland, I grabbed ahold of one of the poles or whatever and I'm just standing there, happily sipping my coffee for about 10 minutes before... well, remember when I said the they keep the windows open in buses here? You do? Really? Wow, now I feel all warm and fuzzy inside! Anyway, again the windows were open and the bus was speeding along the highway, so of course after a while the draft decided it was time to get rid of Juha's amazing Flextronics cap.

At this point my superb reflexes kick in and I try to grab the cap with my free hand before I flies off altogether. Too bad my superb reflexes didn't notice the superb Tim Hortons coffee I was holding in this 'free' hand of mine. The coffee superbly soars into the air and I get it all over my hair, back of my neck, right shoulder and my backpack. Like I said, the bus was full, but not full enough so I was pretty much the only one standing while everyone else was sitting and fully able to enjoy the spectacle of me making an ass of myself.

So I start to smile, embarrassed, go all 'heh, I'm such an idiot', turn around and try to see where my cap flew. At first I can't seem to find it anywhere, further deepening my embarrassment. Then a nice lady behind me starts to point at something so I follow the trajectory and find my cap neatly parked on the shoulder of this youngish, twentysomething asian dude sitting on the seat next to me. "Ah, there it is, thanks," I say, grab the hat and... bang! A massive, brightly coloured 'ooohhhh crap...' explodes inside my head.

As I lifted the cap I realized that not only did I splash coffee on myself, but I also managed to pour it all over this guy's shoulder. His striped, blue shirt had a nice pattern of brown randomness all over it. By this time I truly wanted to go into ostrich-mode and stick my head in the sand to get away from all this embarrassment. The asian guy must have been a Zen Master or something, because he never bat an eye, just kept reading his book, acting(?) as if nothing had happened. I launch into a burst of apologies, so so sorries, totally my bads, all the while trying to find a kleenex or something to give him, but no, can't find one. The nice lady behind me tries to find one, but she doesn't have one either. The guy just sits there, reading. The poor guy must have been too shy to get mad at me or something. I'm fairly certain he whispered something during my little barrage of apologies. It could have been "It's OK", but I couldn't really hear him through the howl of the wind blasting in through the windows.

The only positive thing about the whole ordeal I could think of was that luckily the coffee wasn't hot any more.

Also, if you read all this you have no life.

Beat

Left at 1pm, came back at 9pm. That's 8 hours of biking. Dollard des Ormeaux, Sainte Anne de Bellevue, Baie d'Urfe, Beaconsfield. Walked around quite a bit too, especially in Sainte Anne de Bellevue.

Tomorrow to Quebec City.

Suhhweeeet!

Awesome day! Went downtown, got off at Lucien L'allier. Checked out the hockey plaques outside Bell Center, then walked to Mary Queen of the World. Mass going on in the basilica or something so I didn't wanna disturb them. Wandered around for 5-10mins, took a few pics and got out.

Got asked for directions twice by French speaking tourists(?). Who do they think I am, a Montrealer? Can't even speak their language! The other one I was able to help, she asked for the whereabouts of Rene Levesque which was easy enough - 'walk 10 metres that way' - she was basically walking on the street. The other group wanted to find a restaurant the location of which I didn't know. No surprises there. All of them were really nice though, polite, smiling 24/7.

Anyhoo, getting sidetracked here, too much time spent with Chick I guess. Walked to the Center for Architecture next and it was brilliant. I didn't understand any of it, a lot of maths, weirdo sketches and diagrams, but it rocked anyway. I mean just look at these things:



I'm pretty sure you weren't supposed to take pics in there, but I realized it after I had taken these. Yeah, I'm slow. The last one is defo my favourite. I have no idea what it's supposed to be but man does it look cool. When I was a kid I wanted to become not a police officer or a fireman, but an architect. Then I realized you needed maths and that was it. Suffice to say, my maths skills aren't exactly legendary.

Then I walked outside where they had a little park with strange statues. Since it was warm and beautiful outside, I decided to walk around some more until it started to rain. Dunno where the clouds came from, but I hurried to Guy-Concordia and took the subway to Lionel Groulx. Hopped onto the 211 just as it really started to pour. Sat in the bus with some random people, rain coming in through the windows. Yeah, folks always open the windows in buses. Beautiful sunset, sun still shining while the rain poured down on the bus. Could see a rainbow arching across the sky through the window, started to grin like an idiot. A huge 747 flew right above the bus. Awesomeness. Couldn't stop smiling. Rain stopped. Still beautiful sunset. Still smiling. One of those evenings when I just truly felt genuinely happy. I love it when it happens, love this little town.

Then later on in Kirkland I was supposed to go to watch a softball game with Chick. Quickly grabbed a jacket and we drove to the park. Thunderstorm right above us, rain, constant flashes of lightning, game cancelled. We drove back to the house, then lightning strikes, all the lights go out. Drove up to St Charles, nope, no power. Pitch black on Brunswick, only lights you saw were the tiny solar powered lights people use as decoration. It was eerie. Loved it.

W: insects to stop biting chunks off of my skin kthx

ALERT, ALERT: This blog entry features pictures taken by Chick so if you see something that looks good it's probably his.

So today Chick and Carole took me here:



That'd be Mont-Tremblant, the local equivalent to Koli. However, this little bump was some 875m instead of Koli's 400m or so, making it apparently the highest point in the province of Quebec. Or maybe just the ski resort with the biggest vertical drop, I dunno, confused and tired.

Anyhoo, this is what it looked like to drive there. It was a 125km (ish) drive and most of it was like this.



Those things in the background are called Laurentian mountains methinks. Problem: clouds were so low you couldn't see much of the mountains.



We arrived at Mont-Tremblant. Yeah, you really couldn't see anything. Visibility at the top was zero.



But this is how it looked like down there at the bottom.



Think they were going for an Alpine theme?



Not a town without a Marriott hotel I guess.



With swimming pools.



And minigolf.



Anvils, being really heavy and stuff, aren't generally believed to make for accepteble weathercocks, but this dude seemed to disagree.



Despite the fog and the clouds it was rather colourful there. This was the main street, pretty sure it was named Kandahar for whatever weird reason. Can't think of much Afghanistan and a skiresort in Quebec would have in common, but hey don't let that stop you.



Nice houses, eh?



Weirdo waterfall rapids thingy. Notice clear(-r +n) water.



Yeah still couldn't see anything. There was a lake at the bottom.



Went to grab a bite. This restaurant rocked.



Their menu didn't. Find at least two typos/mistakes and I'll give you a cookie.



Ooh weather's changing, awesomeness! Let's drive back.



Took the James Bond elevator up to the top.



Passed some folks trying to climb up. I guess they couldn't afford the lift.



Whoever photoshopped that charismatic stallion in there did a really poor job.



I don't remember why I chose to upload this particular photo. Think of something, I'm sure you can do it, just use your imagination.



Oh looky, it's teh town below.



View from the top. Notice the shadows the clouds are creating. Or don't.



That dude climbed all the way up to the summit. According to tourist information, it takes 2 hours to hike up there. This guy said he did it in 50 minutes. Liar liar pants on fire, but still thumbs up for making it up to the top without a Monty Python style heart attack.



View to the north I think.



They had like nine lifts at Mont-Tremblant. Also, seems like every single little hill you see in any of the pictures posted here has a ski resort. I stopped counting them after the 7th or so.



Oh yeah apparently there was a really beautiful lake there called Lac Superior, obviously named after how I always feel. Didn't see the lake though as I was too busy sleeping. You know how it is with me and cars and trains, sleepy time for little Juha.

Sigh...

I seem to excel at getting bad service. I just came back from La Belle Province and this is all the two guys there said:

Guy 1: You ready?
Guy 1: K.
Guy 2: Five bucks.

No smiles, no pleases, no thankyous, nothing, while I of course tried to be as polite and likeable as possible. Both of them just looked at me as if I'd recently killed their dogs and grandmothers and girlfriends with maybe some parent murdering thrown in too for good measure. The two people (a guy and a girl) who came after me got really good service, lots of chatter, smiling, laughing, everyone just screaming happy happy happy, so it's just gotta be my face or something. John Goodman couldn't have said it better.

Two weeks

In exactly two weeks I'll be sitting on the plane going back to Finland. Well technically speaking I hope I'll be sitting in the plane, but I guess I gotta stick to the old English convention of using prepositions as illogically as possible. Anyway, I can't belive I only have less than 14 days left.

I've been really active as of late, and therefore my nerd credibility is on the decline, something which Jon never forgets to remind me of. First I was in Hudson with Murray, Heather and Bradley, getting bombarded with all kinds of outdoors activity for two days. Then I tried to regain some of my nerd credibility by spending the Saturday playing boardgames with Dan, Andrew and Jon, but unfortunately my efforts were in vain as the next day I was out again with Murray, Heather, Bradley, Don and Pat, biking along the Lachine canal to the old port and doing all kinds of non-geeky stuff that people who aren't nerds tend to do. Like eating ice cream.

And today I went biking with Don and Pat again. Oh boy, I need to do some heavy geekage back in Finland to reclaim my former glory. Note to self: start by using expressions like oh boy. Anyway, we picked up some bagels from a place in Marche de l'ouest or something similar(ish), drove up to Parc Cap-Saint-Jacques or whatever in Pierrefond or something or another. Please, never make me spell French stuff, please I beg you.

There we ate some bagels with way too much cream cheese, just like you are supposed to, gulped down some ice tea and I even had my very first granola bar! Or so I thought anyway. I was really excited, yay, another one of these famous things I had only heard about but never tried myself, and then it basically turns out to be a muesli bar! Why use such a fancy name for a muesli bar you weird North-Americans you. My initial dissapointment of it being a glorified muesli bar quickly faded away as I tasted it though, mainly because it tasted like someone had crashed a sugar truck into it.

Then we biked around the park for a couple of hours. We happened upon an organic farm in the park, stopping there for a good half an hour or so. It was a neat little place with all kinds of scary animals, cows, goats, chickens, bees, horses, spiders, geese, ostriches and this:



I mean isn't that just adorable? The cat was just chillin' in (or on?!) the wheelbarrow.

Eventually we found a beach where I proceeded to swim and Don and Pat proceeded to freeze their asses off, Don in particular. I had to try and coax him into dipping himself in the water for like 30 minutes. Honestly, I don't get it! The water was almost as warm as the place I'll be going to for writing all the blasphemous stuff I have. I could have spent years in the water, that's how warm it was. Added bonus: now when they ask us about the Mighty Ottawa River in the Friday night quiz we always go to, I can say 'oh yeah, that's right, that's the river I've swum in' and feel superior.

Anyway, bike back to car, drive back to Don and Pat's place, drive to Costco, look like :O when entering Costco, spend way too much money at Costco, laugh at the absurdity of Costco, spend more money at Costco, exit Costco, drive back to Marche de l'ouest or OK close enough, go to Dunn's for some smoked meat goodness, bike back home along the hydro servitude before the storm gets here and the rai---oh crap too late, here comes the rain, oh the lightning too, oh &%!£ I think that lightning just struck right th---oh %$"! again, and again, oh crap, faster, ride faster &%/€@$!", yikes, not again, wow that was close, holy cow I'm soaked and wet and CRACK uh that was wayyy too close CRACKLEIdon'twannadiepleaseletmejustBOOOOOMgethomesafelypleasepleasepleaseBOOMBOOMohgod, ohgod, ohgod, I don't care how unlikely it is to be struck by lightning CRACKLE wowneverseenquadruplelightningbeforeBOOMohOKI'drathernotseeitagainplease, CRACKLE, almost home, almost home, BOOOM CRACKLE CRACKLE my shoes are like swimming pools BOOOOM soooo close, soooooooooo close CRACKLE, there it is, whew I can't believe I made it!

So I'm standing there in front of the garage door, panting, soaking wet, almost having peed my pants in sheer terror when Chick, with a smug glee on his face, comes out the front door and starts to snap pictures of me with his camera, laughing at my miserable existence like the good friend that he is. Thanks, Chick, appreciated!

Eventually he goes to get me a towel (grudgingly of course!) and after drying myself and pouring the water out of my wallet, camera and sunscreen can, among other things, I grab a can of Dr Pepper and we talk about all kinds of stuff until midnight. Well, 'we' meaning mostly just 'Chick'. I know Jon finds this just utterly perplexing, but for some reason I really enjoy these little 5-hour chats.

Maybe later

I logged on, full of excitement, bursting at the seams with energy, just itching to pen a massive blog entry dishing out even the tiniest of details about my past few days, naturally accompanied by a plethora of tremendously beautiful pictures of course.

Then I realized I was simply just totally beat and decided to go to bed instead. Yes, I wrote all this just to let you know that I was too exhausted to conjure up a blog entry.

However, so that your precious time wisely spent reading my blog wouldn't have gone entirely to waste, here is an image for your entertainment:

Oh yeah I guess I need a title too

Chick made an incredible discovery today. I had told several people it's impossible to add videos to my blog without going through all the hassle with youtube, but turns out it's not! Thank you, Chick! Also, thank you Dan for taking me to an Indian restaurant with a buffet and not telling me to stop when I reached and then passed the point of stomach-explosion-imminent, thank you soo much! And since I'm on a thanking spree... thanks Don, the steroids you gave me are totally working for the poison ivy blisters!

OK, the last one sounded a bit weird.

What I won't tell you though is that the button to upload videos was right next to the 'upload picture' and I simply hadn't noticed it before, because that would be really embarrassing, wouldn't it.

Anyway, Chick and Carole took me to an awesome place today. It's a spot a certain individual would absolutely detest, because they happen to have nightmares about what happens here, but I really loved it. I can only imagine how amazing it looks at night, but even during the day it was so cool. This is the place:



Doesn't look like much, eh? I guess you're right. Here's another shot that might give you a little clue of what it's all about:



No? Don't get it? Look closely, what's that thing near the end of the road?

Yep, that's right - an aeroplane. So what's so strange about it? Well how about the tiny little meaningless fact that it's about two metres above ground! That's what's so strange about it. The guy sitting on the chair in the pic was a total pr0 btw, he eveb had like a shortwave radio to listen to the air-to-ground radio chatter. Maybe planespotting is the local equivalent to trainspotting.

Anyway, here's what it looked like from where we were standing.








Iiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeouuuuuuuuuuuuuhmmm!! Somehow our four-flights-a-day airport in Joensuu doesn't quite pack the same punch. Oh, if you're wondering about the weird change of angle there in the pics above, it's not only because I used a different pic for the right-above-you-shot because I missed the plane in that particular progression as you can see in the last one (it wasn't easy to get pics of the planes, trust me!) but also because every single plane came down strafing weirdly like that, at an angle due to the strong wind. They only aligned themselves with the runway just before touching down and hence the weird shift.

EDIT: Interesting, I seem to have found a little language quirk. To me, strafing has always meant lateral movement, but apparently it actually has nothing to do with movement and instead means shooting people with machine guns from a low-flying plane. And while that too might fit this situation, it's not what I meant. In videogames from early 90s onwards, strafing meant side stepping or moving laterally in general. It seems like that's where it crept into popular use and that's certainly how I picked up the word. I had no idea whatsoever it actually means something else. Lovely how language changes, eh?

Anyhooo, there were planes landing pretty much every two minutes and they were literally going just above your head. I mean just look:



The planes were right there in your face! Surprisingly though it wasn't as loud as I thought it'd be. Or then that's just more evidence of me going deaf.

Oh yeah since I now know how to upload videos let's see if it actually works.



Well, it took a while, but at least there seems to be something here on the editor. Probably looks horrible though, my camera is most likely a pre-WW2 model. Also, the plane on the video was a rather small one, doesn't really look as impressive as the biggest ones I saw. Also #2, I was an idiot for recording the video while standing in a tunnel. I should have recorded it up there on the road seen in the first few pics, because there you could actually see the planes landing.

Anyway, sorry about the lack of updates as of late. I've been busy/tired/lazy/unmotivated, take your pick.

The bitter ramblings of a nearly-deaf Finn

You know, I've started to hate, no, loathe going to restaurants. Not because the food's bad, not because it's too expensive (well sometimes it is), but because it makes me feel like I was stupid. Like an idiot. A total moron. No, in fact more like a dribbling, mouth-breathing, pants-on-head-wearing retard. Wow, that must have been the most offensive thing I've written in this blog. I am well aware that one should never ever use the r-word, it's a horrible thing to say. I know, and I apologize. But honestly though, going to restaurants makes me feel stupid.

Why? Well it's partly because things tend to work in ways I'm not used to, but mainly because my hearing's all messed up. If there's a lot of noise in the background, say radio, chatter, cars going by, that sort of stuff, I can't hear jack. And this leads to plenty of embarrassing situations. It doesn't even matter if it's a (supposedly simple and straight-forward) fast food joint. Like today when I went to Tim Hortons. Of course the radio's on (loud!), it's 16:15, the place is packed and people are chatting away like no tomorrow, so my gut reaction is pretty much to flee. However, I needed to grab a quick bite before my movie-marathon, so I decided to stay, knowing full well that getting out of there with a meal and my sanity was pretty much Mission: Impossible 4. Here's more or less how it went:

Guy at Tim Hortons: "Mumble mumble!"
Me: "Bonjour, could I have the Ham and Swiss combo with a coffee and donut XYZ?"
(I think I may have stayed true to my Finnish roots at this point and forgot to say 'please', again. Thinking back this might actually explain a few things...)
Guy: "Mumble mumble mumble?"
Me: "Sorry?"
Guy: "Mumble mumble coffee mumble mumble that?"
Me: "... sorry, I couldn't hear you..."
Guy: "WOULD YOU LIKE SOME COFFEE WITH THAT?"
Me: "...uh... you mean like another cup of coffee? One cup's fine, thank you."
Guy: (blank stare)
Me: "... sorr-"
Guy: "Mumble mumble mumble mumble coffee mumble?"
Me: "... look I'm really sorry mate, but I-"
Guy: "MEDIUM COFFEE OK?"
Me: "Yeah medium's fine, thank you."
Guy: "Mumble mumble sugar mumble mumble?
Me: "Uh... yes please?"
Guy: "Mumble cream mumble mumble?"
Me: "Yeah, sure?"
Guy: (blank stare #2)
(Uncomfortably long pause here, I'm hoping I just said 'yes' to cream and sugar)
Guy: "Mumble mumble a donut mumble that?"
Me: "Yes, I'd like the donut XYZ please."
(BTW, why on earth do they keep asking me whether I want coffee/donuts when I clearly announced my desire to get coffee and a donut right at the beginning! And it's not just a fluke, it has happened to me like 3-4 times already. It's like it doesn't even matter what you order... you could go there and order a coffee, a newborn baby and a chainsaw and they'll ask if you'd like some coffee with that.)
Guy: "Is this mumble mumble?"
Me: "Yes, that's the one"
Guy: "Mumble mumble else?"
Me: "Err... no thanks, that's all."
Guy: "That'll be mumble mumble mumble."
(So I give him the money and he gives me the change. I haven't received any of the stuff I ordered yet.)
Guy: "Mumble mumble mumble."
Me: "Sorry?"
Guy: (blank stare #3, looooooooong)
(At this point I'm like 'God, kill me now...')
The guy stares at me, points toward the end of the counter. I say thanks, trying my best to hide my embarrassment while I move away from the counter. How was I supposed to know I needed to pick up the stuff elsewhere? What made the whole exchange even worse was the fact that there was a line behind me. I mean I could feel their eyes burrowing into the back of my skull, that's how much they loved me back there. I felt like just throwing my hands up in the air screaming "Look people, I am sorry, I truly am, but I just don't know how these things work AND I CAN'T HEAR ANYTHING PEOPLE SAY TO ME!!!" In hindsight, I'm kinda glad I didn't.

When my order was ready, I didn't even try to listen to the mumbling of the girl. Since she is looking at me and saying something while holding a tray full of stuff looking more or less like my order, I figure it must be for me, so I grab it, thank her and quickly flee to the farthest corner of the place and hide from the angry mob that had formed behind me.

You know it's even worse when they happen to have a very thick French accent. I once went to Dagwood or Dagwoods or Dagwood's (honestly, the use of apostrophes here (or lack thereof) sometimes makes no sense whatsoever!), ordered a sub (or well that's what I thought I did, anyway) and the guy asks me "Mumble mumble you mumble joust?" Of course, not having the slightest idea of what he's saying I naturally launch my regular 'sorry?/pardon?/excuse me?' -assault, but he just keeps repeating the same sentence. And I'm like what?? Oh god I have no idea what this guy is telling me this is so embarrassing I've asked him to repeat what he said at least 6 times and he keeps repeating it over and over again and I don't get it help me please someone help me!!

I mean it was a sandwich place, not a medieval fair or anything; no horses, no lances, it just didn't make any sense for him to challenge me to a duel. Then the guy pointed at the bowls full of toppings in front of him and it finally dawned on me: "How would you like it dressed?" I blushed like a school girl. I asked him to just stuff everything in, hanging my head in shame.

I dunno what's wrong. I really should get my hearing checked, but it's always been fine. It's still fine as long as there isn't a lot of other noise. It's like I focus too much on the irrelevant stuff in the background and miss all the important bits. My dad's just like this too, maybe it's genetic? This is one of the few things Taina seems to get annoyed with when we're together. We're walking on the street, cars going by, and our conversation is like
Taina: "Should we warm up the sauna tonight?"
Me: "Yeah I read about it, it was pretty terrifying."
Taina: "... umm what?"

Anyway, I just needed to vent. Sorry! Truly I apologize. I know some of you have been desperate for more updates, you know who you are, and I'll try to post some pics tomorrow as I have a day off from wor*COUGH* Fantasia.

Also, REC 2 - the best horror movie I've seen in ages. Then again I never saw the first one.

Itchyyyyyyy!

It appears that I have been horribly blighted by poison ivy! The toes on my right foot are covered by small blisters that are sometimes pretty itchy. Looks pretty funny too, there are plenty of small, red blisters and white, dried-up old blisters, seriously it's a mess. It's been like that for a while already, but only today I realized it's poison ivy when I asked Carole about it. I have no idea whatsoever where I could have been in contact with this foul piece of flora, especially bare feet, but I guess anything's possible.

On a bit lighter note, I tried Coaticook ice cream today! It's a local brand, made somewhere here in Quebec. I bought the maple + walnut one and it was pretty good, not the best I've tried but still ranks up there with some of the Valio stuff.

Fantasia's been awesome so far, only very few genuinely bad movies. Tomorrow at midnight I shall experience the stupidly amazing Re-Animator in its full glory with 1000 other fans. It's gonna be earth shattering, can't wait! Oh and if Jon wants to leave before the Q&A with Stuart Gordon and Jeffrey Combs I will ask Combs afterwards if Herbert West could reanimate Jon's mauled, dismembered corpse.

OH MY GOD I DID IT!

I finally did it! I found a way to upload several pictures at a time! I am a GENIUS! I will now celebrate this magnificent discovery that will no doubt grant me the Nobel Prize by uploading several pictures at a time!



Today I went biking with Don and Pat. This is where we started from. No, it's not a church this time, it's the Atwater Market. I was told it's full of Americans but all the people I saw kept saying 'eh' so I had obviously been lied to. It's not a very good picture because my skills in photography are as good as my skills in mathematics. Anyway, there's like a market hall and a market place with...



...vegetable/fruit/flower stands. They sold FINNISH BLUEBERRIES there. Except they were grown somewhere in Quebec.



This is the Lachine Canal. Another name I probably just butchered. We started our trip by crossing it. Oh we did use a bridge.



This may have been on the first island we went to, Nun's Island or something. Yes, yes, butchering it again. Apparently they really like bicycles here, enough to whip up a bicycle made of FLOWERS anyway.



Then we crossed an ice bridge. As you can see, the river's quite wide. Although you can't really see it due to my amazing photography skills, the colour of the water was all wrong, it was turquoise like the sea. Rivers shouldn't be like that. It's just wrong. Also, being the stupid idiot I am, I didn't take a picture of the bridge but I assure you it took quite a while to get across to the other side.



This is the other side I mentioned just two seconds ago. It's called the sea way or something like that. It's deep enough for bigger ships to get through, I think you can get all the way down to the Great Lakes, but don't quote me on this one.



So basically it was just a narrow strip of land in the middle of the water, going parallel to the river. There was nothing there but this road and some trees and plants, and water on both sides.



There were all kinds of weird plants in there.



This was a cotton something.



They had a map of the longest biking/walking(?) trail in the world, basically it goes across Canada and then some. Or maybe it was for cars, I dunno. Sounds a bit unbelievable anyway.




There were bridges everywhere, old bridges.



After a while we arrived at another island. It was a peculiar place shrouded in mystery! What could it be?



That's right, a Formula 1 racing track!



I'm pretty sure those skid marks hadn't been caused by bicycles. The blue creature in the picture is not Don, I swear.



In the middle of the F1 track they had a really nice park.



A rather odd tree, wouldn't you say?



Oh yeah, there was a casino too! Btw, am I the only one who thinks that casino looks a bit like the ferries we got cruising between Fin and Swe?



Oh yeah they had an artificial lake and a really nice beach there too. Not a bad F1 racing track, eh? The weird thing is that here going to a beach seems to costs you, 12 bucks for this one.



This is where we had ice cream. Not in the tower but if you could turn 180 degrees you'd see the place. But you can't. Neener! Oh, I was brave enough to buy a strawberry slushie too and survived to tell you about it.




This is a bixi bike stand. It's a rather nice system. You either pay a monthly fee ($29, you can use them as much as you'd like) or a one time fee ($5) and you can just grab one of the bikes, ride around for 30mins before you gotta kind of sign it in at another stand somewhere. Then you can just go again and again and again. The stands on top of hills are often empty whereas stands at the bottom of the hill are packed. I wonder why?



As you can see, the current is quite strong.



This is Biosphere. It used to be the American Pavillion in the world expo of '67, the opening ceremony of which, btw, would have been totally ruined without Chick's amazing contribution of getting totally freaked out by jets flying over alll of a sudden. Yes, you have to show me the newspaper clip. Hmm I don't know where I was going with this. Anyway, it's the Biosphere.



The robot they stole from the Beastie Boys music video with the help of a time machine.



They even had a nice little waterfall there. Purdy, eh?



Oh and Art(tm). Who could live without some Art(tm)?



Certainly not these two.



More winged dudes were just chilling in the water.



Another bridge. At this point we were already leaving the last of the three or so islands we went to and started to get closer to old port. Yep, that's downtown in the background.



Now this is definitely one of my favourites from the expo '67. It's called Habitat '67 and it's made of solid awesomeness.



I mean just look at it. Marvel at its magnificence!



Yeah it's so awesome it's not even funny any more. I mean it has holes in it! Holes!



Oh yeah, another park. We must have been to at least 87 during the day.



I like it how they often have tables and benches in the parks. I hear people often come here to BBQ.



Oh look, someone's fishing! I guess the river's not that polluted after all. Or maybe they just like the taste of glowing fish.



Here's another view of the Biosphere and the Art(tm), from across the river.



See the colourful things in the distance? That's La Ronde or something, an amusement park. I might go there at some point.



What the deuce? Who is this stupid idiot and what is he doing in my picture? And look at that thing on his head! What a dork!



This boat just let the current carry it away. It said 'zero pollution' on the side of the boat and I guess that's why.



There were some industrial areas along the river, too.



This is amazing. See those tags up there? The graffiti? That thing is like 50-60 metres tall if not more. The folks actually climbed all the way up there, wrote some of that stuff upside down. I'm not sure if I should applaud their incredible dedication and call them crazy. Maybe I should do both.



This is the Lachine Canal again. We rode along the canal back to Atwater Market. Downtown in the background again.

The whole biking trip took us at least some 4-5 hours. After that we went back to Don and Pat's place for some BBQ goodness. I left at around 11am and came back after 9pm so it was a pretty long day. Definitely worth it though! More biking to follow, I'm sure.

Oh, it seems like I can only upload 5 pics at a time and as it naturally takes 5x as long for it to upload the pictures, it's not like I save that much time after all. There goes my Nobel. Boo!